Feedback summary emails on hotmail

Hmmm... I expected some kind of response, eventually, to one of my posts here in the community forums. Is this a closed forum where new folks aren't welcomed and discussions are among long-standing members only? Was hoping for a pretty open place to get information from other, possibly helpful users, or even Auctiva people from time to time.

I'm coming from the not so wonderful world of -------- and look forward to a bit more wonderful of a world at Auctiva. So far I'm using both accounts together as each has strengths.

HI- I don't think you are being ignored by members, it is probably not used by the people that are active on forums. I do not use it or would be willing to help. I do my feedback through ebay. I do not use the excel in your other post either. (tried it a couple of times with no success so gave it up)

Perhaps someone from Auctiva can help you out? Maybe a note to support, but make SURE you clear your cache and cookie jar first...and let them know you have done that!

The forums are not very active anymore. A few years ago there were many folks participating but for various reasons that has changed.

I learned a long time ago, that it is important to join a community prior to using the software. It can be an important guage.

Just my thought...but I think some of the forum members have surrendered maybe they quit selling, and a few others use facebook for their issues. While I am not big on facebook for community issues have gone there to get get a few announcements there that we not on forums.

It also use to be that auctiva was more active on the forums and think really they set the tone for its users.

Just my thoughts..and I am sure others thoughts may differ greatly.

THANK YOU to both of you for answering.

I didn't look much at the forums before joining Auctiva to be honest. Didn't really cross my mind but I certainly could have.

I am moving from --------- for a long variety of reasons, but I think I may keep one leg, hardee har har, over in their camp. Both Auctiva and --------- have their own strengths. Auctiva's strength is that it works. Also has good templating capabilities, can have more than one browser window open, can copy and paste from another application into description, the list goes on and on of the simple things that make it so much better. I like the emails, but I suppose they could be better. Mostly I like it because it's easy and it works all the time.

Seriously... --------- often just plain fails. And, from what I can tell, Auctiva has a support department that actually THINKS as individuals. I've filed a bunch of cases, like those I posted here. I'm getting some good feedback. --------- you will at best get a canned answer and an angry one at that.

And --------- has horrendous software development issues. Being an engineer for forever (30+ years), you can sniff out bad, or rotten as it were, software practices. Here's a good one... after 2 weeks, their bug database goes through and CLOSSES ALL OPEN BUGS. It just does it. If you don't keep filing the same bug, then it just gets erased. And even then it never gets worked on. They are in the process, in the past 2 days, of cramming a beta down the user's throats. It's been doing such nice things as offering free shipping, randomly, when you list. Some people are losing a LOT of money due to this.


The thing they do well they outsourced and that's the shipping part. They paired with Stamps.com. It's great and nothing ever breaks. The rest of the site sucks.

Here's a good one... for 2+ years people have asked for a title box where you can see the entire title, not just 40 characters. You STILL can't see the title.

There are 15 employees I learned from the CEO, that work there.

My biggest problem I would say is that I'm paying a lot to have these 3 services running every month - Stamps.com, ---------, Auctiva. But it's saving me a lot of time and headaches so it's hard to put a price on that.

I too am not a Facebook user. I know that's so dinosaur-like, but I'm not into the public spotlight. Multiple arrest warrants will do that :-O (insery humor)


Is there any way one of the nice, kind people here could try a test of getting a summary feedback email? Or, look at a report? The free Excel tools work with the CSV reports, but Excel doesn't. Go figure. One suggestion was that I move from Excel to OpenOffice. Oy. NOT a helpful solution.

What I think I'm going to do with the CSV situation is write a pre-parser that reformats the date fields into a useable format. It's better than an Excel Macro I think because of all the warnings, extra steps, etc. This way I'll download, run the parser and launch excel all in the same action.

Thank you both for taking the time to answer me.

If you have suggestions about other potential candidate systems to use, I'm listening. You can give starting and ending letter of the service perhaps? ;-) But I think for the money Auctiva is pretty darned good.

Any suggestions of other solution providers would be stricken from the forum, understandably. Auctiva wouldn't want us promoting competitors and i understand that.

A lot of folks here have used ebay to list directly during failures or glitches. they say its substantially improved.

not sure why you pay for stamps.com when shipping directly from ebay/paypal is free for anything sold on ebay.

copying and pasting to the descriptions is ok but there can be errors. i have learned to use notepad++. it's not fancy but professional and readable.

if support is not addressing your questions, ask for it to be escalated. the product managers will give you the best answer although possibly not what you want to hear.

Depending what you ship (we ship jewelry) using eBay's shipping has been almost painless. When it comes to Insurance we use, please no laughter, Ship Saver Insurance through eBay's Third party Applications ( --------- runs that very well go figure). So far we have saved almost $500 in insurance fees. The rates are 0.76/100.00 value in the US and 1.00/100 international. I am sure if you ship large items your situation maybe different

It is things like large envelopes, letters, etc, that I use stamps.com or the integrated --------- + stamps.com interface.

I ship small parts and often in plain letter sized envelopes. Without being able to ship for cheap cheap cheap, these parts simply wouldn't sell. Watch repair people are SO cheap!

I also sell on Amazon and other places. PayPal isn't my only payment source.

I forgot the exact example case I sent to support, but I recall almost immediately running into problems. One thing I can easily do, for example, is switch between package and envelope. The USPS Click and ship won't allow it. There's a ton of extra work involved.

I'm sorta big on figuring out how much my time is worth versus the cost of the service. Saving even a couple of hours makes a $9 service a bargain.

I've also automated quite a bit to help situations where there are a lot of steps involved. I haven't written scripts for Auctiva yet as I'm still figuring out all the manual steps involved. I may not need any scripts as there are things like Master Templates that make things pretty easy.

I tried to figure out a script to go from Auctiva's sales page to the USPS click and ship application, but it was getting a bit difficult. Lots of fields to fill in, and once I do have it set up, I have the problem of what to print the postage on. My stamps.com account has really nice sheets I run through my laser printer to print letter postage

I take a "mosaic" tool approach. I piece together tools that are really good at what they do into a toolchain. Put together a PDF by scanning, running images through a powerful image processor, create searchable PDFs using high powered PDF creation tool with OCR, etc.

Auctiva is quickly becoming one of those tools for me. It's a nice wrench to add to the toolbox. I'm finding out what it's good at, and what the weeknesses are. If I can exploit the strong points and replace the week ones, then I consider that a success.

I really appreciate all of the info you guys are giving me! It's GREAT to hear.

Note that I am not promoting other services... honest! I am here at Auctiva to stay.

did not mean to suggest you were promoting others. was only trying to say that if i mention other resources, they would be stricken from the discussion.

both ed and lookandbuyme are seasoned and offer excellent advice. there are only a few other major contributors and so its not as rich an experience as it was a couple of years ago (the forum that is).

I am a little shocked that auctiva personnel would go in and __________out names in posts. (yes, it is competitor, but really ....there are not that many competitors out that that most people with 1/2 a brain could not figure it out.) The _____________'s sure peaked my curiosity enough to search them out. Sure made me to go auctiva and ebay charts comparing the two rather than USPS and auctiva as ebay rates are better than USPS site for insurance.


Ed, thanks for that shipping information....WOW that can be a $$$ saver for those who insure their items.

Makes me wonder with auctiva bing 3rd largest provider why they can't compete with that other companies shipping insurance prices....HUGE difference for those who insure their items.

I do have a question...WHY in the would would auctiva personnel go in and __________out the posts and NOT bother to respond to the Mike the Watch Guy's Post addressing a problem.

Seems to me that OBVIOUSLY the post was read and there was more interest in ______________ing out areas than in responding to the question????

Strange to say the least...but at least we know the post was read, just ashamed the original question was ignored.

Just my thought and probably NOT shared by others.

I share your thought!

The Auctiva support folks have been fantastic in my opinion overall, but I'm finding a lack of taking responsibility when there is a defined problem. The line of thinking I saw was that since my issue wasn't discussed in the forums a lot or brought up by many users, that it must not be that big of a problem. It is my own doing that the forum was brought up because I mentioned reading a 2009 post about the Excel date field being bad. Since there hasn't been discussion since then the problem must not really be a problem. I was escaping this kind of thinking when I signed up here at Auctiva.

Maybe it's because I've been in software for so long, but it bothers me that something so very fundamental in an Excel report, the date, remain broken for years and not fixed simply because enough people didn't squawk. Can the developers be THAT busy that someone can't fix what's clearly a bug? It's a philosphy and not a good one if priority is set by loudness of users. Pride in ownership.... the engineers should show a bit of pride in owning this software.

I do have to give credit to the support person helping me (just tried to find name but support's database is down or something). Anyway, they tried the report in free versions of Excel and it worked. That's great, but I use Excel. And Excel is the only application mentioned in the reporting instructions anyway. I don't want to download and install a free version of Excel to read Auctiva reports. Still, they are trying and I'm grateful for that.

The same soft of thing is happening this Feedback summary email. It's a feature that I was promised when I signed up and it's broken. Maybe it's been broken for 4 or 5 years, but it's still broken.

I didn't come to the forum to vent, or complain. That's so common and useless on forums. I really did come seeking feedback if others have issues, or had suggestions. But your observation that someone is indeed reading but not commenting does add weight to my thoughts that perhaps there's a bit of ignoring problems as a method of solving them. It's sad when that happens and it would drive me nuts if my engineers worked like this.

I totally, completely understand blanking out my mentioning the competitor. I should have known better, but the context wasn't one of promoting. Anyway, I'm good with the posts being edited. It beats them being deleted!

Thanks to all of ya, again, for your help and observations.

Sometimes people just give up on issues. I tried this excel thing..and I am not a techie person, so threw in the towel with it. (seemed over my head and my brainpower at the time). I think most of us are like that on here...we know enough..but not as much as others, so we miss out on things that could make our lives - listing easier.

I am just bewildered as to WHY they read and ignored, it it totally beyond my comprehension, perhaps they assumed we would not realize it was edited by them, I don't know....but even a note saying we are aware of the issue. . we are: a) working on it b) a fix for the issue c) we are working on it but can't tell you when it will be fixed d) you are the only one with this problem....e) You get the drift here.....something is better than NOTHING!

You say venting/complain, it is a fact that this is not working and complaint was ignored. If you do not put on forums people assume they are only one with the issue....so it never gets put out there. Plus, this is FREE therapy...we do not charge for our 2 cents worth (which mine is usually worth just about that).

Shockingly, on this and most forums if lots of people SQUEAK LOUD enough and if ENOUGH get behind the squeaking things do get done! (case in point...when Auctiva first announced their fee system. (which use to be free) The fees were CRAZY....and I mean CRAZY, for me that fee would have been around $200.00 month....now $10.00. So there is power in numbers as shortly after the outrage, and I mean outrage and LOTS of active forum members leaving....auctiva decided to get more reasonable....so YES, unfortunately, whining in #'s can/does work.

As far as competitor note...I am not sure it was YOUR note necessarily that it was blanked out over. Obviously the note by one of our fellow community friends may take shipping business away...would be hard for them to edit one listing without other being done I would think....

I do have to say...in Auctiva behalf...they rarely edit posts and believe me they have taken some hard jabs at times. I have seen VERY FEW posts deleted and one which was deleted that I know of they said they deleted accidentally and i believe reposted it.

I give them a HUGE amount of credit for that!!!

I am sorry to have confused things Auctiva is the Largest 3td party developer. That means except for eBay they are the largest

they were not real smart to edit the post because it portrayed IF as not a good site. The positives mentioned were not compelling. Personally I would have left it as it is an excellent reason to stay or switch to Auctiva. Also not posting a comment as to why they did that is just plain RUDE.

If Auctiva is that big RAISE the PRICE and RAISE the SERVICE. Don't take things for granted or the downward slide will start and once that happens it is impossible to stem that slide. I have seen many companies in the past take customers for granted and regretted that decision.. Since Auctiva seems to be math challenged let's show them an example.

Suppose that have 20,000 eBay customers (I have no idea if that is high or low). Raise the price $1/month means an EXTRA $240,000 that would equate to approximately 4 to 6 new developers. I rest my case.

Hi Mike

sorry it took me so long to respond. I work remotely in Iowa and the last few days have been trying to finish a project so QA can test it on Monday

seriously consider for your eBay sales using eBay. I use Stamps.Com for my other stores. However I use the free eBay 3td party version of Stamps. When I have sales on my other stores I use Stamps Batch option so because that volume is small we pay nothing for Stamps.Com